Ráma said:—Tell me, O sage, whence comes our knowledge of the world (as a distinct entity from God); and then tell me, how this difference is removed and refuted. 2. Vasishtha replied:—The ignorant man takes to his mind all that he sees with his eyes, and not at all what he does not see. Thus he sees a tree in its outward branches and leaves, but knows not the root, which lies hid from his sight. 3. The wise man sees a thing by the light of the sástra, and uses it accordingly; but the ignorant fool, takes and grasps anything as he sees it; without considering its hidden quality. 4. Be attentive to the dictates of the sástras, and intent upon acting according to their purport; and by remaining as a silent sage, attend to my sermon, which will be an ornament to your ears. 5. All this visible phenomenon is erroneous, it hath no real existence, and appears as the flash of light in the water and is known by the name of ignoramus. 6. Attend for a moment and for my sake, to the purport of the instruction which I am now going to give you; and knowing this as certain truth, rely upon it (and you will gain your object hereby). 7. Whence are all these and what are they, is a doubt (inquiry) which naturally rises of itself in the mind; and you will come to know by your own cogitation, that all this is nothing and is not in existence. 8. Whatever appears before you in the form of this world, and all its fixed and moveable objects; as also all things of every shape and kind, is altogether evanescent and vanishes in time into nothing. 9. The continual wasting and partition of the particles of things, bespeak their unavoidable extinction at last, as the water exuding by drops from a pot, make it entirely empty in a short time. 10. Thus all things being perishable, and all of them being, but parts of Brahma, it is agreed (by Logicians), that Brahma is neither endless nor imperishable, nor even existent at this time (since by loss of parts by infinitesimal, the whole is lost _in toto_ at last). 11. This conceit (of a theist) likening the intoxication of wine, cannot over power our theistical belief; because our knowledge of bodies, is as that of things in a dream, and not at all of their real substantiality. 12. The phenomenals are of course all perishable, but not the other (the spirit), which is neither matter nor destructible, and this is conformable with the doctrines of the sástras, which mean no other. 13. Whether what is destroyed come to revive again or not, is utterly unknowable to us; all that we can say by our inferences, is that the renovations are very like the former ones. 14. That matter existed in the form of vacuum upon its dissolution, is not possible to believe (from the impossibility of plastic nature to be converted to a formless void). Again if there was the vacuum as before, then there could not be a total dissolution (if this was left undestroyed).